Major Juvenile Service Cuts Coming to Utah as Part of State’s Legislative Budget

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After the loss of key federal funding and the end of a stopgap measure, state lawmakers in Utah are cutting the budgets of agencies providing crucial services to juvenile services. After a federal decision to suspend funding of non-medical expenditures associated with residential care was made two years ago, Utah legislators provided its state agencies - such as Juvenile Justice Services (JJS) and Division of Child and Family Services (DFCS) - with emergency stopgap funds. This legislative session, however, stopgap funding for juvenile services programs ceased, with state legislators issuing an additional $3.2 million in budget cuts. The impact of the federal decision on Utah was severe, costing the state an estimated $27 million in Medicaid funding. In the process, Utah’s JJS ended up losing an estimated $9 million per year, with the state DFCS agency losing an estimated $18 million annually.

LGBT Youth Over-Represented in Juvenile Justice System

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A disproportionate number of LGBT teens are represented in the nation’s juvenile justice system, possibly making up as much as 15 percent of the total juvenile justice population in the United States, according to a representative of the Center for American Progress. The findings were discussed last month in Washington, D.C. at an event sponsored by the National Council on Crime & Delinquency and titled “Unfair Criminalization of LGBT Youth.”

Aisha Moodie-Mills, a LGBT policy and racial justice advisor at the Center for American Progress, presented findings on behalf of Dr. Angela Irvine, one of four authors of “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Youth and the Juvenile Justice System.”  The results from the report, which were published in the 2011 book, “Juvenile Justice: Advancing Research, Policy, and Practice,” state that while gay and transgender teens make up only 5 to 7 percent of the total youth population, they represent an estimated 13 to 15 percent of the population of young people involved with the nation’s juvenile justice system. Moderating the event, Moodie-Mills said that stressors from family and school could potentially make LGBT teens more vulnerable than the general population to violence, prostitution and homelessness. Shortly after the event, survey findings from a joint project involving the Williams Institute, the Palette Fund and the True Colors Fund found that almost 40 percent of the nation’s homeless or at-risk youth are gay or transgender. Panelist Maya Rupert, a representative of the National Council for Lesbian Rights, said that several institutions, such as the nation’s education and legal systems, were failing the country’s LGBT teens.

Upcoming OJJDP Webinar Examines the Role of Families for LGBT Youth

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On July 19, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) will present a webinar titled “The Critical Role of Families in Reducing Risk and Promoting Well-Being for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Questioning and Intersex (LGBTQI) Youth.”
The webinar is the second in the organization’s “Understanding and Overcoming the Challenges Faced by Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersex Youth” series, and will focus on resources, strategies and tools used for family education and intervention. During the webinar, research findings and program approaches from several organizations will be discussed, including techniques and data presented by The Family Acceptance Project, Greater Boston Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), the Green Chimneys Program of New York City and San Francisco State University. The event will examine how family acceptance promotes the mental health and well being of LGBTQI youth, as well as techniques for reducing risks of depression, suicide, substance abuse, homelessness and potential sexual health hazards. The webinar is sponsored by the National Training & Technical Assistance Center, a program operated by the OJJDP. The online presentation is scheduled to begin at 2 p.m. EDT, and will run approximately one and a half hours.

Stray Bullets Injured Hundreds in One Year, Study Finds

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More than 300 people in the United States were struck by stray bullets between March 2008 and February 2009, often from shootings unconnected to the victims, according to a new study by researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California, Davis. Published in The Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, the study calculated the frequency of stray-bullet shootings during an 11-month period - a phenomenon, according to researchers, that resulted in at least 317 injuries. Garen Wintemute, professor of emergency medicine and director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at UC Davis conducted the research, which was partially funded by the California Wellness Foundation and the Eli and Edythe L. Broad Foundation. Using data collected from news alert services such as Google Alerts, in addition to GunPolicy.org archives, Wintemute and his colleagues tracked stories containing the term “stray bullet” for nearly one year, ultimately counting 284 shootings in which people were injured or killed by stray bullets. The study defines a stray-bullet shooting any instance in which a bullet escapes the immediate scene of the shooting and results in the injury of at least one person either by directly striking the victim or through associated “secondary mechanisms,” such as injuries sustained from glass shattered by a bullet.

New Report Examines the Prevalence of Sexting Among Teenagers

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According to a new report published in the Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine , more than half of all respondents in a recent evaluation of teen “sexting” trends reported that they had been asked to send nude photos of themselves to other teens, with more than a quarter of the respondents stating that they had sent nude photos of themselves to other adolescents. The report, Teen Sexting and Its Association With Sexual Behaviors, entailed a longitudinal study involving 848 high school students in seven high schools in southeast Texas. The mean age of the respondents was 15.8, with a majority of the population consisting of 10th and 11th grade students. Researchers found that 28 percent of the sample population reported having sent a nude photo of themselves via “sext” - a sexually explicit e-mail or text message, usually sent and received via a cell phone or smart phone. An additional 31 percent of the sample population said that they had asked someone to send them a sext, with 57 percent of respondents reporting that they had been asked by someone to send them a sext.

Department of Labor Helps At-Risk Youth ‘STRIVE for the Future’

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STRIVE, a New York City-based organization with 21 affiliates throughout the United States, was recently awarded a three-year, $5 million grant from the United States Department of Labor for a new, nationwide initiative called STRIVE for the Future. The program is centered on providing services and assistance to formerly incarcerated youth, with the grant expected to benefit about 400 teens. A recent press release from the organization said the initiative will focus on juveniles ages 14 and older who primarily come from high-poverty and high-crime communities and were involved in the juvenile justice system, but not the adult criminal system, within the last 12 months. The organization says it will provide numerous tools and services such as career development assistance and various forms of training and education for at-risk youth. Additionally, STRIVE plans on developing several community service projects, as well as mentoring and violence reduction programs, as part of the STRIVE for the Future initiative, with all 21 affiliates having the opportunity to apply for local community services.

Traveling The Silk Road to the Deep Web’s Darkest Corner

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Via a popular online service, cocaine, prescription pills and heroin may just be a mouse click away from reaching your child

There is a scene in Steven Soderbergh’s 2000 film Traffic in which a teenage girl says something that has become, for the most part, a generally recognized truth about high school. “For someone my age,” the character says, “it’s a lot easier to get drugs than it is to get alcohol.”

Indeed, typing the term “easier to get drugs than alcohol” into a Google search box returns more than 12,000 pages, with thousands upon thousands of Internet users stating what many parents fear - that for their children, obtaining illegal drugs is anything but a challenge. What most parents are unaware of, however, is how the Internet is potentially making it even easier for youth to obtain drugs. In the 21st century, teens do not necessarily have to seek out dealers to procure marijuana or cocaine; in fact, scoring illicit substances these days could be as simple as turning on a monitor and making a few mouse clicks. At first glance, the Silk Road - a popular online marketplace - looks like any other website; just passing by, one likely wouldn’t be able to distinguish the service from eBay, Craigslist or any of the myriad other electronic bazaars on the Internet.

UK Advocates Turning to NYC as Model for ‘Saner’ Criminal Justice System

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For decades, New York City was besieged by violent crime, peaking in 1990 when the city was ravaged by an estimated 2,245 murders. But then something remarkable happened, according to Greg Berman, author of the recent report “A Thousand Small Sanities: Crime Control Lessons from New York.” Over the last two decades, New York City experienced an unprecedented turnaround in violent crime. In 2009, there were 461 murders in the city, a 79 percent drop from 20 years earlier. Other crimes drastically declined as well, with the city seeing significant decreases in rapes, robberies and car thefts. Berman quotes Frank Zimring, author of the book “The City That Became Safe,” who called the crime rate reduction in New York City “the largest and longest sustained drop in street crime ever experienced by a big city in the developed world.”

The report, released by the Centre for Justice Innovation, explores the possibility of applying the policies and practices implemented in New York City to communities in the United Kingdom - where in the 2009-2010 fiscal year, London’s Metropolitan Police tallied more than 170,000 instances of violent crime, including 113 murders and more than 2,800 rapes.

New CDC Report Shines Light on Teen Suicide Trends

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A new report states that the number of attempted suicides by teens has dramatically increased in the last few years. The report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance - United States 2011, published last week in the agency’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report -- examined several teenage suicide trends. It found the attempted suicide rate increased from 6.3 percent of the nation’s high school population in 2009 to 7.8 percent in 2011. Additionally, the report finds that almost 16 percent of the nation’s high school students seriously considered attempting suicide in 2011, an increase from 13.8 percent just two years earlier. Compared to 2009 statistics, researchers say that American high school students are generally more depressed, with more than a quarter of students reporting that they felt “sad or hopeless almost every day” for two or more weeks in a row.

Report Urges State Agencies to Address Growing Kinship Care Needs

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A new report finds that more American children are living under kinship care with relatives or family friends instead of their parents, than a decade ago. The report, published by Annie E. Casey Foundation’s KIDS COUNT project , entitled "Stepping Up for Kids: What Government and Communities Should Do to Support Kinship Families", found that approximately 2.7 million children are currently living with people other than their parents, an arrangement also known as kinship care. The report also found that about 9 percent of the nation’s youth will live under care of an extended family member for at least three months at some point in their childhood. The authors of the report claim that kinship care needs to be addressed by both community and government programs, as many times family members or friends that assume parental responsibilities are hampered by limited income and the legal inability to obtain basic medical services or authorize medical consent for the children in their care. According to the report, kinship care guardians are very likely to be poor, single, older, less educated and/or unemployed and are often unfamiliar with federal assistance programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).